Dead Bodies Podcast

A new-age health and wellness workshop went horribly wrong in Quebec, Canada, in 2011, when 38-year-old Chantal Lavigne was literally boiled to death in a bizarre therapy session.

Babies sent to the neonatal intensive care unit are usually the most vulnerable, and in need of the greatest care. But instead of nursing them back to health, British nurse Lucy Letby was doing the unthinkable: attacking and killing them.

In 2018 Lana Clayton found her husband Steve lying dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home in South Carolina. At first it was believed he’d had a heart attack, but when toxicology showed the presence of poison, police were led to something common in most household bathrooms.

Survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972 had to use great ingenuity to stay alive in the blizzard conditions, with very little food, and as the days passed it seemed nobody was coming to rescue them.

Lawyer Garry Hoy fell to his death from a window on the 24th floor of a Toronto law firm in 1993. Was it suicide, was he pushed, or was there another reason behind his tragic death?

In the UK in 2016, Ian Stewart’s fiancee Helen Bailey goes missing. The investigation into her disappearance leads police to take another look at the death of his first wife Diane. They fear they have hit a dead end when they discover that Diane’s body was cremated.

The murder of pastry chef Renea Lau in Melbourne's Kings Domain has been described as one of the city's worst. Senior police were shocked by the brutality and duration of the attack and because of its random nature.

Worldwide, around 1.35 million people die in road accidents each year. Research to make road travel safer is constant, as new technology and design emerge. Crash Test Dummies are used for most of the testing. But that hasn’t always been the case. Kirsten is missing, and we welcome Simon Owens to the studio today in her place. Join our massive tantrum over her (hopefully temporary) disappearance.

Sharnelle continues recounting covering the 2013 trial of Adrian Bayley who was convicted of the rape and murder of Gillian Maher in Melbourne. Thawee Nanra was the leader of a Taiwanese cult. His devotees promised his followers they could cure their ills by consuming his bodily fluids. And that’s not the worst of it …..

Drought has seen Nevada’s Lake Mead drop to historic lows, exposing things which have remained underwater for years. In one case, a discovery on the lake bed brought closure to a family after years of heartache. Convicted rapist Adrian Bayley is responsible for the rape and murder of Gillian Meagher, in a case that brought the people of Melbourne to the streets in 2012. Sharnelle covered his court case.

Grady Stiles Jr. was not only a killer, but a murder victim. He became famous as Lobster Boy in a bizarre travelling sideshow. While most of the world was confined to their homes at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, UK police were called to investigate a car being driven erratically near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, leading to the uncovering of the murder of Phoenix Netts.

Elmer McCurdy was a drunk and a train robber. It was decades after his death that his body was discovered at an amusement park in California. If you had committed a murder, would you consider yourself to be violent? Would you be chummy with the police when they arrived on your doorstep? Some killers behave differently, as evidenced by the odd behaviour of wife killer Stephen Searle.

Today, Brighton is one of Melbourne’s wealthiest suburbs, but in 1853 it was the scene of two bizarre murders, with a bag of sugar left on the victim’s head. And we unpack some frank feedback from listener Joey.

Nurse Roger Dean was working in a Sydney nursing when he murdered 11 elderly residents by setting a fire to the facility as they slept on November 18, 2011. Allen Lee Davis was sent to the electric chair for brutally killing a mother and her two young daughters. His botched execution is known as Florida’s messiest ever.

In this special Christmas episode we cover the 1992 “Christmas killings” in Dayton, Ohio. Marvallos Keene was the head of a gang that murdered six people. Hospital worker David Fuller pleaded guilty to murdering Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells back in 1987. And when police raided his home they found a stash of pornography described as “unimaginable sexual depravity” that led to investigators uncovering his years of necrophilia.